


Ad Astra

by WildandWhirling



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Angst, End of an era, Multi, abandoned places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 14:30:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: Babylon 5 is haunted.





	Ad Astra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janetcarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/gifts).

> So, this is something I've been thinking of for a long time and, with this competition, I had a GREAT chance to work with it. Special thanks to Kanadka for beta-ing and trying to help fix my Minbari philosophy. If it isn't quite in line with canon, she's definitely not the one to blame. 
> 
> Happy Halloween!

_ I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. _

It is common knowledge among the Alliance, from the farthest corners of the most distant, disinterested member of the League of Non-Allied worlds, to the halls of the palace on Centauri Prime (which still gleam with polished marble and silken curtains that blow in the autumn breeze as if they hadn’t been stained by blood not too long ago), to the hallways outside the President’s office on Earth, to the Council Chamber on Minbar. 

The station of Babylon 5 is haunted. 

A hundred words have been used for it, in a hundred different tongues that no translator can ever fully capture the nuances of. 

The word the Minbari use is difficult to pronounce, even more difficult to explain, but the closest that can be used is “Away from the Stars.” A cold, barren plane, dark as a winter’s night, where anyone trapped there would have to crawl with their hands and knees along jagged rock. Where those that had never quite reached Valen’s light would shuffle through forever, as they had before His coming. It was not the occasional trip that was easy to laugh at in sympathy, a momentary stumbling block in the eternal struggle towards enlightenment, but something more permanent, without the hope for continuing onwards, without renewal. No life, no spirit; a shell that had long since drained its own time dry, holding everything inside it captive, a soulcatcher’s orb of metal and glass. 

The Narn use a different term, one that has a similar meaning to “Limbo” in the Earth texts. Not a place of suffering, they have very little concept of a Hell after so long, nothing that can match the sting of a Centauri electro whip. No, their concept is something more cerebral, a kind of “never endingness.” Nothing changing, nothing moving. An eternal static, like a pond that stretches into eternity, with not a single ripple on its surface (though even the few oases that once dotted the Narn Homeworld have long since been drained after one particularly popular uprising.) 

And the Centauri use another term, one that relates more to a business exchange that had seemed good at first glance, but held a knife buried just beneath the sleeve. (Typical for describing political alliances gone wrong, as they often do in the highest levels of the Imperial Court.) A golden opportunity that had actually been gilt. 

Among the humans, the terms are more varied, changing with the person. 

Cursed (like all the others, who had stood proud and brilliant in the night time until they’d been extinguished.) 

Abandoned. 

Ruined. 

Desolate. 

_ Alone _ . 

But among every culture, there is an agreement: There are ghosts that walk the halls of Babylon 5. 

Not tangible ghosts. These leave no marks on the bulkheads, the metal faded, but as strong as the day it had been commissioned. 

But it is haunted all the same, spirits packed in every centimeter of the station. 

A Centauri emperor, his robes still feeling too loose around him, might see another, older Centauri, grappling with a Narn, their quarreling echoing throughout the empty halls. He might walk away, shaking his head. (His shoes are not too tight yet, but dancing is hard when there are bodies still to bury, and he’s not sure how much longer he can.) 

From the other side of the room, his eyes might meet those of an older Narn woman, her back straight as she watches the same spot as him even if her jaw trembles. She might walk away then, not sparing a word, as is usually her way. Narn will rebuild, as it always has. Mourn the dead, yes, but support the living. And she has a garden to tend to at home, row after row of things that are green, things that will grow and thrive. 

And there are many living on Narn still, many who have a future their ancestors would never have dreamed of. 

Many of them who would not have existed without his help, though he will never truly have a moment of sleep where his mind doesn’t roll over the numbers again and again, thinking of whether, if he’d managed to put in one more signature, said one more lie, covered his tracks one time more, he might have saved five thousand more lives. (The cost of being a good man in a melée and living without the ease of martyrdom.)

A weary general, her steps becoming heavy with the weight that has settled over her, might see a blonde woman in a dull yellow suit that only she could pull off. No matter how hard she looks (and she does look, often, picking through her brain more thoroughly than a PsiCop could have ever done when she's alone in her bed), the blonde woman’s smile shows none of the war that has already begun to rage inside as she leans over in her chair, looking at a younger version of the general in the stool beside her, almost unrecognizable without the steel in her hair and expression to match it. The general’s heart might feel like it’s been weighed down by a boulder. She might swallow as she sits down at the table one last time, replacing her younger self as her hand runs a line in the dusty surface, imagining it tangling with a gloved one. 

A young man, human in appearance, but with the spirit of an Anla’Shok Na hiding beneath deep, lively eyes that are sober in this moment, might see his parents, his parents as they appear in holo recordings, two young gods fresh from smashing the world apart with their own hands so that they could create a new one for him to be born into. His parents as he had never really been able to see them, because war and the rapid wear of age had deprived him of that chance. His mother with her easy, serene grace, balanced with a liveliness and spirit that has never left her. His father fiery and brash, every ounce the war hero he’d heard tales of growing up.

Another human man, his hands wrinkled but still steady after years of healing the sick, the wounded, and everyone else that needs saving regardless of whether the wounds they carry appear on the surface, might see a black haired ranger, arm slung around a younger version of himself, a laugh springing easily to his lips at something he’d said. (It was funny, he didn’t even remember what it was, just the look on Marcus’ face when he said it. He hasn’t gone to where Marcus lies, hasn’t seen that face frozen like a princess in one of the fairy tales his mother would sneak to him without his father knowing. Maybe that laugh will live again still, long after he’s gone. The people a few decades from now might need a good laugh, if the Ranger came too late.) 

And walking the halls faithfully, as if nothing has changed since the last day they were all there together except for the fact that his boots are now the only sound in the Zocalo, where it’d once been impossible to so much as order a beer at speaking level, a security officer might see a red headed woman, pizza in hand, a smile on her face that’s already starting to grow weary and distrustful. And then that same woman, clothed in black, looking at the same Narn that had been arguing with the Centauri, her smile broken, cautious, but as she looks up at him, it tilts upwards ever so little, as they walk out of the station, side by side and into an unknown future, his hand at her back, guiding without pressure. 

Ghosts, only a few of the millions of lives whose destiny, for a brief moment in the space of eternity, touched the station, leaving some part of them with it. 

Perhaps, when the station is finally blown away, erupting into a brilliant burst of flame, on its own terms, one last time, they find peace, quieting and stilling, or perhaps they’re scattered to the wind, tiny dust particles of their essence touching worlds and lives millenia after the debris of the station has corroded and disappeared.    
  
After all,  _ that _ had never been the real Babylon 5. That had long, long since passed.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I decided that I wanted to choose the scariest thing I could think of: An existential crisis. 
> 
> This is a very special work for me for three reasons: It's the first (and, at the moment, only planned) excursion I've done into the world of Babylon 5, it's the 30th thing I've published to AO3, and, as of this particular project, I have now reached over 100,000 words total published. I never really thought I could do that kind of writing, I never really thought I could write ANYTHING, so this is really, really huge, and to anyone reading, to anyone who leaves kudos or comments, thank you so much for being along for the ride.


End file.
